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20110425

SAPF hunts Boshoff family like animals

My ex-husband had illegal weapons in his house - but I have to appear in court on 30 May ’

Mrs Zelda Boshoff: ‘cops bullied, terrorised and watched us’

Monday 25 April 2011 Mrs Zelda Boshoff admits that she cursed her husband after her acrimonious divorce – but never expected that he would take out an interdict against her which resulted in her family allegedly being bullied and harassed by police officers. The cops even did cartwheels in her flower-beds, sat in a police van watching her house and hammered on her windows at 7am.

Mrs Boshoff told the tale to the Sondag Afrikaans tabloid – which omitted a crucial detail, namely the town where all this was happening. Censorbugbear has been unable to obtain comment from the SAPF for this reason. (Sondag journalist Jacques Nel, interviewed Mrs Boshoff).

Mrs Boshoff said her family’s ordeal started after she had obtained an interdict against her divorced husband Salmon Boshoff. “He had illegal weapons in the house and I feared for our lives,’ she said. However luck was not with her: the judge who issued the interdict to stop her ex-husband from harassing her, had gone on holiday and locked it up in his safe. Her husband then took out an interdict against his ex-wife -- and ever since then, her house is being watched and local cops are ‘harassing her’, she said. “They are hunting my family like animals’, she told Sondag journalist Jacques Nel.

The interdict was issued on 6 April 2011 and she was ordered to appear in court on 30 May. “On 14 April I wake up at 7am from two big cops in a blue bakkie, hammering with their fists against my windows. They had a warrant but I refused to open the doors to them,’ she said. The neighbours then started noticing that the police would regularly park a van in front of her house, waiting for Mrs Boshoff to return. Zelda and her children had found refugee elsewhere however – and the cops got so bored waiting for them that they started spinning cartwheels with the bakkie in het flower beds.

Mrs Zelda Boshoff and daughter: ‘the cops are hunting us like animals: Picture by Sondag -

The term "genocide" was coined by legal scholar Raphael Lemkin in 1943, writing:

'Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actionsaiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.

The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of personal security, liberty, health, dignity and lives of the members of such groups... '